Things We Know by Heart by Jessi Kirby Page A

face is serious now. “Listen,” he says. “I know earlier I said just a day, but that was . . . I wasn’t being completely honest. And I know if I let you get in your car and drive away again without telling you the truth, I’ll regret it all the way home.”
    I freeze at the words honest and truth .
    He drops his eyes to the ground for a moment, then brings them back up to mine. “Anyway. I promise I won’t surprise you at your door again, but if you ever decide you want another day—ever—I have lots of them, and I . . . I liked this one.”
    â€œMe too,” I answer, and it’s all I say, because his words, and the way he’s looking at me, send little pinpricks of heat all through me. “Thank you again.”
    He nods, resigned, like it’s the response he was prepared for. “Okay then, Quinn Sullivan. It was a pleasure spending the day with you.” His tone is more polite now.
    â€œYou too.” I smile. Take a few steps backward, toward my car. My heart pounds in my chest.
    â€œDrive home safe,” Colton says.
    â€œI will. You too.”
    â€œI will.”
    We could go on forever like this, finding tiny, meaningless things to say to delay the inevitable, because it’s not what either of us really wants. But we’re each at our doors,hands on the handles, like the choice has already been made.
    I stand on tiptoe so I can see him over the roof of my car, wanting one last moment. “Good night, Colton,” I say.
    He gives a little half smile and a quick nod. “Good night.” Then he gets in his bus, closes the door, and starts it up.
    I get in my car too, put the key in the ignition, but I don’t turn it. I watch as Colton gives one last glance in the rearview mirror, then pulls away from the curb and raises a good-bye hand out the open window, and drives away.
    I sit there in the dusky stillness of the evening until I can’t see or hear his bus anymore, and then I think the words I’ve repeated in my mind so many times.
    Come back.
    Words that were a plea to Trent.
    Come back.
    Words that I knew asked the impossible.
    â€œCome back.”
    Tonight I whisper them—to the sun setting over the ocean, to the tide carrying the moments Colton and I shared out to sea. To Colton Thomas.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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    â€œThe heart is a hard flesh, not easily injured. In hardness, tension, general strength, and resistance to injury, the fibers of the heart far surpass all others, for no other instrument performs such continuous, hard work as the heart . . . enlarging when it desires to attract what is useful, clasping its contents when it is time to enjoy what has been attracted, and contracting when it desires to expel residues.”
    â€”Galen, second-century physician, “On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body”
    RYAN’S CAR IN the driveway is the first thing I notice when I get home. I have a moment of worry that something happened to Dad again, but then he comes around the corner of the house with the garden hose. I get out of the car, relieved but confused.
    â€œThere’s my girl,” my dad says, rolling up the hose as I reach the front porch. He does a double take. “You’re glowing—either that or you got a pretty good sunburn.”
    I look down at my bright-red arms. “Time got away from me. What’s . . .”
    â€œYou have a good day at the beach?”
    Guilt over the half-truth in my note pings around in my chest, and I try not to make it worse by adding to it. “Yep!” My voice comes out higher than I mean for it to, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
    â€œThat’s great.” He smiles and holds an arm out for me as I walk over. “It’s good to see you getting out and enjoying yourself,” he says, pulling me in for a hug. He kisses the top of my head; then his eyes fix on my lip. “You get everything worked out with the driver